Ring flakers, sometimes referred to as stranders, are used to cut wood into flakes, wafers or strands for further processing into other products. The logs are fed into a wood chamber and clamped in place. The wood chamber is encompassed by a blade ring which rotates at high speed and has knife blades around the periphery. The blade ring is mounted on a hub attached to an arbor which in turn sits in an arbor support on a carriage that moves perpendicularly to the rotation of the blade ring. The logs are flaked by rotating the ring and moving the carriage forward slowly until all of the logs have been flaked. The carriage then retracts allowing the next batch of logs to be fed into the wood chamber for further processing. The flakes, wafers or strands pass downwards into a chute and are conveyed away below the carriage.
Any rocks or foreign material mixed in with the logs are also fed into the wood chamber and the knife blades contact these rocks or foreign materials. The only way for materials to exit the wood chamber is to pass through in the blade ring slots after being contacted by the knife blades and frequently damage is caused to the knife blades or to the ring itself. Unfortunately, these events occur at unscheduled times and it is important to be able to replace knife blades and also remove the blade ring and repair or replace it as quickly as possible to minimize down time and lost production.
At the present time, in order to remove a blade ring, it is generally necessary to disassemble the back stop for the logs and the wood chamber, remove the housing surrounding the top of the blade ring, and then disconnect the ring and lift it out of the machine. A new blade ring can then be replaced and the machine reassembled. It has been found that this removal and replacement process can take two or three days, thus the machine is unusable for this length of time which constitutes a considerable loss of production.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,583,574 to Pallmann is disclosed a flaker machine for trunk and residual wood which includes a blade ring mounted on a hub which rotates on an arbor. Provision is made for the back stop and wood platform to pivot away from the front of the machine. If this is achieved, then one is able to slide the blade ring out of the front of the housing without having to remove the housing itself. This patent illustrates some heavy pivoting mechanisms which are likely to increase the cost of the flaker machine.